I'll Remember That
by oldhokages
Summary: A collection of SaiSaku drabbles and oneshots, mostly taken from prompts on tumblr.
1. vocabulary

**SAISAKU ;;** vocabulary

_tumblr word meme, **petrichor**:_  
_the smell of dry rain on the ground_

"I don't know what to call it," Sakura says, dipping into a long stretch as they began their cool down.

Sai is puzzled. "Call what?"

"The smell," she clarifies.

She daintily touches her toes and nonchalantly, Sai gives himself a sniff. He smells just like one would expect to smell after a workout, and the word he knows is the proper one to describe the scent is _sweaty_. Had he known Sakura would take offense to his natural smells after a training session, perhaps he would have suggested a different weekly activity for staying in touch after he left Team Kakashi to make room again for Sasuke.

"I don't know what you're trying to say," he says, nearly defensively.

"The smell," she repeats. Her tone is agitated. "The smell once the rain dries, like the earth is in the air."

_Oh_.

"It's called petrichor," he tells her, and she fixes him with an odd stare and quirks her eyebrow.

"Really? Where did you learn that?"

"A book," he answers sheepishly.

Sakura rolls her eyes. "Of course you did."


	2. exposition

**SAISAKU ;;** exposition

_tumblr word meme, **gymnophoria:**_  
_the sensation that someone is mentally undressing you._

Had Sai known how the drawing would plague him, he never would have created it in the first place. There was something about it – _something in the eyes_ – that left him wary and unsettled. Perhaps it was the subtle crease in the half hooded lids of the sleepy, dreamy Sakura he sketched, or maybe the mouth was the problem with its cracking, smirking lips. The look pierced him and in his heart he felt terribly and completely exposed. He snapped the sketchbook closed.

"Is something wrong?"

He looked up at his subject, his muse, and smiled as sweetly as he knew. "Nothing."

Except as he looked at Sakura in flesh and blood, he realized that yes, something was very, very wrong. Something in the eyes that left him wary and unsettled. Exposed.


	3. that never existed

**SAISAKU ;;** that never existed

The first time Sakura saw Sai after he voluntarily left Team Kakashi, he was stark naked and shoulder to shoulder with approximately a dozen other nude men. They had the decency to be embarrassed as Sakura poked and prodded, asking the invasive questions required of their yearly physical and blushing heavily when she politely asked that they cough twice while she supported their testes in the palm of her hand. It was all very clinical for her; they were the fifth group she had seen so far and it had been **years** since she had considered the process of a hernia check _awkward_. Some things just stopped phasing if you did them often enough, and administering physicals was one such thing for Sakura and any of the other nurses and medics in the hospital. Although Sakura mused she could at least _try _understand why it bothered her patients. She saw any number of naked shinobi throughout the day during annuals.

They saw just one pretty nurse.

"Hey there, Ugly."

"Sai," Sakura said tersely, adjusting her stethoscope to listen to his breathing. His breath hitched with what Sakura assumed was supposed to be a laugh. She raised an eyebrow at him curiously

"No one's called me that for quite some time," he said flatly as Sakura went about her jabbing in his ribs and bending his arms and legs in examination of his joints. "Not since that mission ended."

"That mission," Sakura repeated. "Of course."

Team Kakashi had just been a mission for 'Sai,' the boy that never existed.

He gave her a false smile when she reached to cup him in her palm, "Feel free to use both hands if you need to ~"

Sakura narrowed her eyes, "Not necessary. Cough twice."

He did as he was told.


	4. hush-hush

**SAISAKU ;;** hush-hush

"You absolutely cannot tell Naruto," Sakura whispered against his lips.

Sai's brow furrowed; he hadn't even considered it, but now the question begged an answer. "Why?"

Sakura sat back in his lap and her fingers danced from the nape of his neck and over his shoulders to rest upon his chest. "Why would you?" she countered, cocking her head.

"I wouldn't," he replied flatly. He had already run gamut of scenarios regarding their teammate and independently concluded it wasn't possible to simply _tell Naruto_. Sai wondered briefly why Sakura didn't trust his judgment, but her soft smile and still softer kiss dispelled the worry from his mind, coaxing him out of his concern and into half-lidded stupor as her mouth strayed from his. Her breath tickled his ear.

"It's just not time yet," she told him, her hips rolling into his.

Sai found no further objection to keeping the secret.


End file.
